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DiSC Management Profile: The Do’s And Don’ts Of Management

It cannot be stressed enough that being a manager takes highly specialized skills. One of the main ones is to be a good listener. Unfortunately, too many people think that being a manager isn’t hard, and that they can simply do this because they are experienced workers. However, it really isn’t that easy. Indeed, some people are instinctively good managers, but the majority have to take the time to build up the experience they need and learn how to be good at management.

Good managers also learn from their staff, as they are the best judges of how well management actually performs. It is the staff who are able to say what managers should do in order to make them happy and, thereby, more productive as well. By engaging staff, leaders are able to learn the real dos and don’ts of management. Let’s take a look.

DO: Get a Baseline on Your Managers Management Behavioral Style

It is important to get a complete understanding of how your managers see themselves as managers before launching into an improvement initiative. The best way to do that, as we have found from our clients feedback, is to put your managers through an assessment.

The Everything DiSC Management Profile is designed to help managers better understand themselves, their direct reports, and their own managers. It will show how they approach their management responsibilities from both a behavioral and situational perspective. It will connect with managers on a completely new degree, assisting all of them to realize improved business outcomes. It is considered the most in-depth readily customizable DiSC-based management training assessment available anywhere.

With The Everything DiSC Management Profile, your managers will understand how to:

Develop and improve their own natural management styles

Improve their communication styles

Increase the effectiveness of how they engage at all levels

DO: Be Consistent in Your Approaches

When management is erratic, employees don’t know where they stand and don’t understand what is expected of them.

“People like and need predictability. Problems arise for employees when a manager is erratic – for example, lenient and upbeat one day, and controlling and dour the next.”5 Things The Best Managers Do And Don’t Do

Staff members need to know what to expect from their managers, and they need to know what their managers expect of them. This is why strategy is so important as well. Although it may sometimes feel as if managers spend too much time in meetings, discussing plans of action, it is precisely this that allows for that consistency in their approaches.

DON’T: Get Angry

Managers should never get angry, particularly with staff. It is a frightening emotion that will leave staff feeling bullied rather than supported. At the same time, managers shouldn’t get angry at external situations either. Although this is not directed at staff, it does make people feel like they wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of this, again creating a culture of fear.

Anger also shows a lack of control, which means staff will start to lose faith in their managers. It is a human emotion and one that a manager will feel and experience in the same way as everybody else, but managers have to make sure they are able to keep this emotion hidden. At the same time, they must make it clear that they are human too.

DO: Be Responsive

Responsiveness is something that managers expect from their staff. As they must lead by example, they have to be responsive in their actions as well. Hence, they must reply to questions and queries in a timely manner, be they by telephone, email, face to face, letters or any other form of communication. This also builds a relationship of trust, because it will make staff feel like they can come to you with questions and requests and know that they will be heard. Again, this is an essential part of employee engagement.

DON’T: Presume or Jump to Conclusions

A manager should never come to any kind of conclusion or judgment without knowing all the facts first.

If you do jump to a conclusion and it is the wrong one, you will have caused untold damage in terms of trust from your workforce. Trust is the be all and end all of a successful organization and when it is damaged, it will take a great deal of work for it to be repaired again. Indeed, it is possible for trust to be irreparably damaged, causing real talent to search for work elsewhere and to no longer be committed to the organization. This can easily happen when a manager doesn’t take the time to check the facts.

DO: Respect and Acknowledge

Besides trust, respect is hugely important within the successful functioning of an organization. Indeed, the two often go hand in hand. As a manager, you must have respect for others. This includes respect for the work that they do, but also respect for their personalities and even personal beliefs and lifestyles. If, as a manager, you have made it clear to be against a certain religion, for instance, and one of your members of staff is of that denomination, extensive damage will be done. They will feel as if their opinions on life are irrelevant, and they will thereby feel as if their opinions on work will be irrelevant as well.

Besides respecting people, you must also acknowledge their hard work. People like to be complimented. Indeed, one of the first rules of parenting is to ignore bad behavior and encourage and acknowledge good behavior. This is the same in the workplace – if someone does something good, this must be acknowledged and mentioned.

DON’T: Micromanage

Finally, it is very important for managers to stay away from micromanagement.

This sentiment has been echoed by workforces all over the world. Nothing seems to be more demoralizing than being given a task or responsibility and to then be told in a very detailed manner how it should be completed. People also do not enjoy their managers constantly looking over their shoulders. This is a trust exercise once again.

Managers who feel the need to constantly check obviously don’t have faith in their employees. At the same time, they need to be able to recognize when someone needs additional help, particularly if they don’t think they can ask about it. Of course, this also demonstrates the need for managers to show they have open door policies, but it cannot be expected that everyone will feel comfortable using that open door.

Clearly, being a manager is about being able to balance things. It is about being fair and non-judgmental. It is about being supportive, while at the same time allowing people to find their own way. This takes great skill and experience.

Co-owner/Co-founder of Intesi! Resources. Educated as an architect I transitioned to technology during my career in architecture. Intesi! Resources was founded in 2002 and my focus is everything Web/eCommerce related from the design and development of our site to all the marketing activities involved. I also provide significant support for our clients on all our products and how they are used to deliver assessment-driven learning solutions that develop self-awareness and interpersonal skills.

About Steve Giles

Co-owner/Co-founder of Intesi! Resources. Educated as an architect I transitioned to technology during my career in architecture. Intesi! Resources was founded in 2002 and my focus is everything Web/eCommerce related from the design and development of our site to all the marketing activities involved. I also provide significant support for our clients on all our products and how they are used to deliver assessment-driven learning solutions that develop self-awareness and interpersonal skills.